[Role of ambulatory surgery in France. International comparisons]

Ambulatory surgery in France was under constraining rules since 1992. In 1998, there were 7,600 ambulatory stations which allowed 2,700,000 ambulatory procedures in a year. French Association for Ambulatory Surgery and International Association for Ambulatory Surgery adopted a limited list of 18 reference procedures to launch a survey on the prevalence of ambulatory surgery. The prevalence rate of ambulatory procedures among this list raised from 35.2% in 1997 to 39.3% in 1999. This rate was the same in public and private health institutions. Ambulatory practice was increasing more than the inpatient procedures. Inter-country comparisons pointed out France as the tenth country for ambulatory prevalence among 13 members of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This underlined the fact that there was probably a growth potential for ambulatory surgery in France.